Trump Is Right About One Thing: 'The Economy Does Better Under The Democrats'

Mr. Glover is an attorney who has testified before Congress and worked for the Senate and House Small Business Committees.

Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in the Sun Country Airlines Hangar at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport November 6, 2016. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Since I’m an old Democrat supporting Hillary Clinton, it might surprise you to hear that I agree with Donald Trump’s top line view of the economy.

No, I don't agree with much that he’s said since he started his 2016 presidential campaign, and recent revelations have rightly drawn opprobrium. But since I’m also an agreeable old southerner, I’ll give credit where credit is due. Donald was absolutely right when he told Wolf Blitzer in 2004: “I’ve been around for a long time and it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.”

That’s right. Trump said out loud the same thing that Hillary Clinton has asserted—and top academics and journalists have confirmed. The same thing I’ve been compiling cold, hard government data on since 1980: By crucial metrics like GDP, job creation, business investment and avoiding recessions, the economy does a lot better with Democrats in the White House than with Republicans. Just one eye-opening example: Nine of the last 10 recessions have been under Republicans.

Watch on Forbes. Hillary Clinton Vs. Donald Trump: Where The Candidates Stand On Employment And Jobs

Pundits don’t agree on exactly why. Some say the common thread may be external factors ranging from oil shocks and warm, fuzzy consumer expectations to economic cycles falling differently from political cycles.

But to borrow a phrase often attributed to Casey Stengel, you could look it up. And not just on my website, www.presidentialdata.org, though the data is all there. This is good, old, green-eyeshade government data. As Hillary’s venerated predecessor in the Senate, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, used to say, you’re entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.

It is simply a fact that since World War II, Democratic presidents have seen 24.4 million more jobs created on their watch—an average of 78.6% more jobs created per year of Democratic administrations—than have Republican presidents. Ditto real GDP growth, 44% higher under Democratic presidents. On the flip side, unemployment has been 18% higher under GOP presidents.

All this despite the fact that before the general election of 2016, a lot of American business leaders famously have donated and voted Republican for president (though not one Fortune 100 CEO publicly backed Trump as of late September, while nearly a third of them had supported Mitt Romney four years ago).

Still, something that happens under Democratic presidents must be a dog whistle to such business leaders. Real business investment has been 193% higher under Democratic presidents.

Democratic nominee Hillary and former President Bill Clinton have touted this dynamic—though not enough, in my opinion—and the non-partisan Politifact has vetted their comments.

Take Bill Clinton’s line at the 2012 Democratic Convention: “Since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24…. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private-sector jobs. So what's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 [million].”

Last year, Hillary Clinton hit related points that my research has buttressed.

The former senator and Secretary of State said last fall in New Hampshire: “I know it’s inconvenient for our Republican friends, but the facts do speak for themselves…. Economic growth is stronger under Democratic presidents. Unemployment is lower. The stock market rises faster. Businesses do better, and deficits are smaller. And one of my favorite inconvenient facts is, under Republicans, recessions happen four times as frequently as under Democrats.”

Focusing on her observation about recessions, Politifact grudgingly found it true. Because experts said this correlation didn’t mean there is a causal relationship based on which party POTUS is from, the website gritted its pixelated teeth and said, “Clinton is right on the numbers, but her claim needs additional information to put its implication into the proper context. We rate her claim Mostly True.”

I’ll take “right on the numbers” any day. And there’s a reason Hillary is right on the numbers. As Politifact noted, she based her statement on a compelling 2013 study by two Princeton professors.

Professors Alan Blinder, now an advisor to the Clinton campaign, and Mark Watson came to this stark conclusion: “The U.S. economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. For many measures, including real GDP growth (on which we concentrate), the performance gap is both large and statistically significant, despite the fact that postwar history includes only 16 presidential terms.”

Yes, I’ll take “right on the numbers” any day. And I’d like to hear more of it.

Another Princeton economist, the noted liberal Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, wrote in his New York Times column that Blinder and Watson looked at various explanations and “found all of them wanting. There’s no indication that the Democratic advantage can be explained by better monetary and fiscal policies. Democrats seem, on average, to have had better luck than Republicans on oil prices and technological progress.”

Luck, is it? At a certain point, I’ll take geopolitical luck if that’s what it is—spanning 16 presidential terms. To quote another historic baseball figure, I’d rather be lucky than good.

With facts like these at our fingertips, Democrats from Hillary on down should be making sure our Republican friends and undecided voters know that if 70 years of history—a lifetime for both major-party nominees this year—is any guide, they would do better under this President Clinton than under a Trump Presidency, which would be unpredictable at best.

After the economic boom of the Clinton-Gore years, then-Vice President Al Gore had planned to use my data as it stood during the 2000 debates but my old friend from Tennessee sadly never saw the opening. Since then, my thesis has only been vetted and validated far more widely and publicly. I hope Hillary will use her closing argument as Democratic nominee to make sure every voter knows it this time.